Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly on Friday declared the government would continue to upgrade the country's railway infrastructure to prevent deadly accidents.
His comments came after two trains collided in southern Egypt earlier on Friday, killing at least 32 people and leaving 165 injured.
Speaking at a press conference, Madbouly was quoted by Egyptian newspaper Ahram Online as saying,
“The state has started upgrading the [railway system], which has suffered from decades of negligence, over the past four years. We have spent hundreds of billions of pounds to upgrade the system."
Madbouly noted, "it [accidents] is not a problem of funding. We are confronting an issue of ‘time lag’ since our modernisation efforts are happening at the same time that the system has to continue operation to serve millions of people daily," Ahram Online reported.
Madbouly acknowledged the coronavirus pandemic had also hit the rail modernisation plans as deals with foreign companies had been delayed.
Friday collision
According to reports, unidentified persons on a passenger train activated its emergency brakes, causing it to halt. The train was rear-ended by the other train, causing both to derail.
The passenger train was heading to Alexandria. “The trains collided while going at not very high speeds, which led to the destruction of two carriages and (caused) a third to overturn,” a security source told Reuters.
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The collision occurred near Al-Sawamiah village in Sohag province of Upper Egypt, about 460km from Cairo.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi warned of action against anyone who "caused this painful accident through negligence or corruption".
History of disasters
Egypt has witnessed several deadly rail accidents in the recent past. Arab News reported, "In March last year, at least 13 people were injured when two passenger trains collided in Cairo, triggering a brief suspension of rail services nationwide. At the time rail managers blamed the crash on signals not functioning in bad weather. And in February 2019, a train derailed and caught fire at Cairo's main railway station, killing at least 22 people and injuring 41, and prompting the transport minister, Hisham Arafat, to resign."
In 2017, a train collision near Alexandria killed 41 people and injured 179.
